novelraw Chapter 281: Episode 281_The Art of the Scam (2)
Chapter 281: Episode 281_The Art of the Scam (2)
2.
The Heavenly King’s hammer was called God’s Iron Hammer. The hammer of the sole agent who represented God!
It was on a completely different level from the Pope, who merely claimed to hear God’s voice.
In truth, every contact with the Pope and the Saintess passed through the Heavenly King.
The Heavenly King’s power was so great that it was no exaggeration to say he truly acted in God’s stead.
It was immense.
He didn’t go around saying such things about himself for nothing.
He had the strength to back it up.
And he had used that strength to silence the complaints of all who refused to acknowledge his claim.
That was the man who had just swung his hammer.
At a Celestial who had been with him for hundreds of years.
Declaring that he would judge her in God’s name.
For the crime of betraying the Celestials, siding with the demons, and endangering those who had once been her comrades.
Of course, it wasn’t certain.
However, given the circumstances, he had made his judgment.
His heart was full of regret, but there was no hesitation in his hand.
It was confidence born of the conviction that he never made mistakes.
And the power matched that confidence.
If it hadn’t been for Epia, the hammer would have gone on to judge Aria, who wasn’t even trying to block it.
“Sorry, but this one’s off-limits.”
“...Demon King Epia.”
“She’s my honey’s, you know.”
BOOM!
Tossing out a line that, for no good reason, made Han Simin’s heart skip a beat, she detonated the clashing weapons.
At point-blank range, the collision of divine power and dark magic—right between the Demon King and the Heavenly King—sent Aria, who had been closest to the impact, flying.
Han Simin hurried over and caught her.
“You okay?”
She didn’t answer.
“See? I told you. The Heavenly King’s no different. Did you really think going back would magically fix everything? Every living bastard in this world is the same. BetaGo, no—God, too. None of them can stand seeing someone else do well. Look at them. The moment they think they might die, they start massacring innocent demons, and now they’re trying to kill you on suspicion alone, without a shred of proof that you betrayed them. Is this the kind of world God wants? One where Celestials are the nobles?”
And he kept hammering away at her.
At this point, given his persistence, it would have been stranger if she didn’t come over to their side.
Aria only frowned and stayed silent.
The fact that the Heavenly King had truly tried to kill her was an undeniable shock.
Yes, she would revive later even if she died.
It might have been a “wise” decision, thinking they could clear up the misunderstanding afterward. But that was something she could accept with her head, not with her heart.
Especially since Aria was a high-ranking Celestial who embraced the world with a broader heart than most.
She couldn’t accept it.
Yet even so, what could she say?
She didn’t have the strength to act on her feelings.
Han Simin understood that all too well, so he comforted her.
“Don’t worry. I’m here. Epia will give him a good beating.”
Epia would win.
Absolutely.
Which was why he could boast so confidently.
“If she loses, she’s not even human—no, not even a demon. I went through hell and even blew up a weapon to get her to +15.”
Han Simin was a master at taking credit.
*
Regardless of what he said, the Heavenly King and Epia plunged straight into battle.
There was nothing more to say.
The Heavenly King had tried to kill Aria, and Epia had stopped him.
That was all the certainty anyone needed.
“I will kill you here and now.”
“Hmm. I’d rather die in bed.”
“Vile wench.”
And beyond such certainty, this was a meeting between the leaders of two races.
Normally, for the sake of stability between the Demon World and the Celestial Realm, and because it was hard to account for the variables of hidden forces, they wouldn’t move rashly. But to sit here and test the waters even after meeting like this was unthinkable.
Turn your back, and you die.
Even if you made it back alive, it was no different from death.
If, in a fight between the Heavenly King and the Demon King, one of them turned their back, that was tantamount to admitting defeat.
If they had never met, that would be one thing, but once they had, one of them had to die.
Sword and hammer met again.
BOOM!
With their clash, space itself tore once more.
This was a battle between the handful of beings who could dare to speak God’s name.
With every single exchange of attack and defense, everyone watching swallowed hard.
The Celestials who had been massacring demons, and the demons who had come with Epia, all held their breath as they watched the two fight.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to help.
It wasn’t that they were holding back for the sake of creating a dramatic mood because Han Simin was filming.
They wanted to live.
What could they possibly do to help in a fight like that? The saying that sometimes doing nothing was the best way to help existed for a reason.
The tradition that had continued for tens of thousands of years had the same root.
Duels between the Heavenly King and the Demon King were always one-on-one.
There was no need to attach a word like “honorable” to it, but in the end, that was how it always turned out.
No matter how many schemes and traps were laid, it ultimately came down to one-on-one.
If things looked even slightly unfavorable, they would sometimes throw their subordinates in as sacrifices.
Celestials or demons below the high-rank were no help at all in shaving even 0.1% off the opponent’s power, but if you had dozens of top-tier ones, you might at least be able to swing the momentum by 1% in your favor.
Considering that this was the Demon World, the demons’ home turf, the Heavenly King really should have done that much.
But this was the same Heavenly King who had just cast out a returning Aria for the sake of saving the Celestials.
“That hammer’s pretty strong.”
The Heavenly King remained silent.
The Heavenly King silently blocked, while Epia darted in with swift movements, thrusting her sword.
In that sense, their fight looked evenly matched.
But that was only how it appeared to the onlookers.
The Heavenly King could feel it.
There was a reason he didn’t respond to Epia’s taunts.
’...She’s strong.’
She was a fledgling Demon King who hadn’t held the title for long.
A succubus, at that—a race that, in terms of combat ability, didn’t even rank among the mid-tier demons.
Yet she was driving the Heavenly King back one-sidedly without using any of her racial traits.
It was a clear show of dominance at the outset.
He didn’t want to admit it, but he had to.
’I’m being pushed back.’
Her sword, leaving crimson afterimages as it danced with dazzling grace, looked delicate enough to be all technique, but it was powerful enough to pierce through his heavy hammer.
It was the kind of broken weapon that made you wonder how something like that could even exist.
However, the Heavenly King was in no position to leisurely ponder such questions.
VMMM.
In a battle like this, in a fight with no room for even an inch of concession, being pushed back a single step meant defeat.
He had to go all out.
In the dark Demon World, divine power began to surge.
3.
Meanwhile, Kenji was preparing for war. It had been nearly two months since Han Simin went to the Demon World.
The thought that he had to squeeze out as much as he could while Simin was gone drove him, and he began pouring money into Fantastic World as if he meant to find the bottom of that seemingly endless bank account.
War. War. War.
He couldn’t beat the monster that was Han Simin’s Demon World broadcast in terms of revenue—Simin’s stream, which he turned on only occasionally, still drew over a hundred thousand viewers even with the viewing fee now fixed at $200—but Kenji had no intention of competing with him in the marketplace using the same model.
Completely free!
In fact, a free channel could generate revenue.
No, unless you had a grotesquely distorted revenue structure like Han Simin’s, a free channel would inevitably make far more money than a paid one.
Ad revenue based on viewer numbers.
On platforms where the number of viewers was limited, the future often looked bleak, but Fantastic World was different.
Anyone in the world could access it easily via phone, PC, or TV, and with a single click, they could watch it 24 hours a day.
How many viewers did that make?
Popular content and popular streamers could easily pull in millions of viewers with a single broadcast.
And the ad revenue that came with that?
People said, half-joking, that there was no need to envy Han Simin.
Of course, if they actually saw the income hitting Han Simin’s account, they would be plenty envious, but Kenji, at least, was not.
He knew that most of the money piling up in Han Simin’s account was technically his share.
Besides, he wasn’t broadcasting for money.
He wanted recognition. To be the top User.
Most people named Han Simin and Specialist as the very best, but how long would that last?
Nothing in this world was eternal.
Kenji believed this was his chance.
“Guild Master. I’ve completed my 2nd Awakening.”
“Good work, Dino.”
“It’s all thanks to your support, Guild Master.”
Right on cue, good news came in.
“I think the time has come.”
Kenji scrolled through his list of broadcasts.
He had been waiting for this moment.
The moment Dino completed Stage 2 of his Story Quest and achieved his 2nd Awakening; the moment when, after piling war upon war, his viewer numbers had reached their peak.
And, finally, the moment when Han Simin’s stream was currently offline.
“I’ll start the war.”
Content on a completely different level from anything so far, the first of its kind among Users—something even Han Simin had never tried, or rather, had never bothered to try—began to spread across the world through Kenji’s broadcast.
*
Up to now, what Kenji had been doing were Territory Wars.
Wars between territories.
Winner-takes-all battles with everything a territory had on the line.
By nature, their scale had to be limited.
Of course, even those were not something ordinary Users could easily experience, and every time a Territory War took place, the forces involved grew. Viewers who enjoyed watching the scale increase with each war couldn’t help but tune in.
They couldn’t compare to the things Han Simin was broadcasting from the Demon World, which were on a completely different level, but from the Users’ perspective, Kenji’s stream—realistic by comparison—was inevitably the second most popular after Han Simin’s.
Above all, it was free.
As more and more people made spending all day at home watching Fantastic World their life’s joy, and even those who worked came home and relieved their fatigue by watching Fantastic World videos, what better broadcast could there be for them?
It gave them a sense of conquest.
It felt like buying some maggot-ridden little territory at a high price and starting from the very bottom.
Granted, the absurd amount of real cash that went into it was so unrealistic that, if anything, it made it easier to empathize with Han Simin, but that part wasn’t shown to the viewers.
And so the scale of Kenji’s territory kept growing, and now the time had come.
He launched a massive promotional campaign and posted announcements.
Even though that cost money, Kenji didn’t care.
Compared to the money going into the war itself, what he spent on the broadcast didn’t even feel like money.
The steadily rising viewer count and the regulars who kept coming back only made Kenji more willing to spend.
To his gathered audience, he spoke with a serious expression.
“Our guild is planning to conquer a kingdom.”
A major announcement!
—Damn, a user-first.
—For real, world first.
—Might as well call it a universe first.
The viewers, of course, were thrilled.
A user was going to conquer a kingdom.
That was a far bigger deal than taking a mere territory. Anyone who had played the game even a little knew how hard it was to become the lord of a territory, let alone a kingdom.
On top of that, there was another reason viewers were going wild: the name of the kingdom Kenji had declared he would take.
—Isn’t that near the Rich Territory?
—Not right next door, but yeah, it’s geographically close.
—The Rich Territory is such a major crossroads that everything’s near it.
This reignited the rival relationship they could never escape from, a story that had been brewing since the early days of the game. They had just been thrown fresh bait, a new Chapter in the ongoing saga.
“I’ll refrain from commenting on that part,” Kenji remarked meaningfully.
And with that, the preparations for war began.
*